A significant problem in capturing images by a camera module is capturing such images under widely varying lighting conditions and still achieving good image quality. In practice, lighting conditions can vary from fully acceptable lighting conditions (such as when capturing an image of a building at noon on a clear day) to minimal lighting conditions (such as capturing an image of furniture on the bottom shelf of a poorly lit warehouse at night). Often, it is impractical or impossible to control the lighting conditions. Nevertheless, it may be imperative to correctly adjust the sensitivity of the camera module.
Sensitivity is a light sensitive capability of the camera module in different conditions. Generally, the sensitivity can be adjusted by weighting pixel values generated by an image sensor when the image sensor detects incoming light. An amplifier is typically used to regulate the pixel values of the image sensor. However, the method of adjusting the sensitivity utilizing the amplifier is limited by characteristics of the amplifier. Furthermore, the image may be corrupted with signal noise and degraded.
It is desired to provide a system and a method for adjusting the sensitivity of a camera module which can overcome the above-described deficiencies.